James Lees-Milne

(George) James Henry Lees-Milne (6 August 1908 – 28 December 1997) was an English writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. He was an architectural historian, novelist and biographer. His extensive diaries remain in print.

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Lees-Milne was born on 6 August 1908 at Wickhamford, Worcestershire, the second of three children and elder son (brother Richard born 1910; sister Audrey – who married Matthew Arthur, 3rd Baron Glenarthur – born 1905) of prosperous cotton manufacturer and farmer George Crompton Lees-Milne (1880-1949), chairman of the family business A. and A. Crompton & Co. Ltd,[1] formerly a Lieutenant in the Cheshire Yeomanry, and his wife Helen Christina (1884-1962), daughter of Henry Bailey, J. P., D.L., of Coates, Gloucestershire, and granddaughter of Sir Joseph Bailey, 1st Baronet (his son, Joseph, the second baronet, being created Baron Glanusk). The Lees-Milnes were landed gentry descended from the Lees family of Thurland Castle, Lancashire.[2] The name Milne was added by royal licence in 1890 by Lees-Milne's great-grandfather James in order to inherit the estate of a maternal relative. This estate included Crompton Hall, Lancashire, which alongside Wickhamford Manor was owned by George Crompton Lees-Milne. (He eventually sold both properties, but the former remained in the family).[3][4][5][6]

Lees-Milne attended Lockers Park School in Hertfordshire, Eton, and Magdalen College, Oxford,[7] from which he graduated with a third-class degree in history in 1931.[8] From 1931 to 1935, he was private secretary to the 1st Baron Lloyd.[4][9] In 1936 Lees-Milne was appointed secretary of the Country Houses Committee of the National Trust.[4] He held the position until 1950, apart from a period of military service from 1939 to 1941. During his tenure he was a regular contributor to the Trust's members' newsletter. He was instrumental in the first large-scale transfer of country houses from private ownership to the Trust. He resigned his full-time position in 1950, but continued his connection with the National Trust as a part-time architectural consultant and member of committees.

Lees-Milne was visiting Diana Mosley when King Edward VIII abdicated. The purpose of his visit there was to examine the 17th-century house that she and her husband Sir Oswald Mosley were then renting. He recorded later how he and Diana (her husband was in London) had listened to the King's broadcast abdication speech with tears running down their faces. He was the lover of her brother Tom Mitford when they were at Eton College together, and was devastated when Tom was killed in action in Burma in 1945.

From 1947 Lees-Milne published several architectural works aimed primarily at the general reader. He was also a diarist, and his witty, waspish and extensive diaries appeared in twelve volumes and were well received. Larry McMurtry commented that Lees-Milne, like Pepys and Boswell, was disarmingly open about his failings — indeed, would not have known how to go about concealing them.[12] Nicholas Birns notes that Lees-Milne spoke "so candidly about himself, his life, and his love of art and architecture that his authorial relationship with the reader becomes a privileged one, not to be readily or casually communicated, not to be flaunted or brandished."[13] Lees-Milne also wrote other works, including several biographies — for instance of Harold Nicolson, The Bachelor Duke of Devonshire, and Lord Esher — and an autobiographical novel.

In 1993 Lees-Milne declined a CBE in the New Year's Honours list,[14] considering it to be inadequate recognition compared to the knighthood he felt was his due.

Lees-Milne died in hospital at Tetbury on 28 December 1997.[4] His ashes and those of his wife, Alvilde, were scattered in the grounds of Essex House.

A series of three plays inspired by Lees-Milne's diaries — Sometimes into the Arms of God, The Unending Battle and What England Owes — were broadcast by the BBC in July 2013.[15]